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<title>&amp; ultramarine skies by woman_in_the_moon</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825248">&amp; ultramarine skies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/woman_in_the_moon/pseuds/woman_in_the_moon'>woman_in_the_moon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>6th year, Aftermath of the prank, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hogwarts Era, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), established sort-of relationship, they talk things out and are generally sad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:21:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,206</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/woman_in_the_moon/pseuds/woman_in_the_moon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometime near the end of sixth year. Sirius and Remus are tired of being tired - they talk things out on a hillside covered in sunlight and everything starts to slide back together again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>&amp; ultramarine skies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They had been sitting on the grassy hillside for almost half an hour before Remus broke the gnawing silence, speaking like they were already in the middle of a conversation. Maybe they were, maybe they always had been.</p><p>“Mostly I just thought you were better than that,” Remus whispered. His voice was barely audible, carried away too quickly by the distant laughter of students splashing around the edges of the lake. Sirius looked at them and wished he were anywhere but here. He felt like throwing up. Instead he twisted a blade of grass around his fingers and tried to avoid meeting Remus’ eyes.</p><p>“I—I don’t know what to say, Moony,” he admitted, just as soft as Remus had been. “It was an awful thing to do and I’ll spend the rest of my life being sorry for it and I wish I were better but I’m not and I don’t know how to fix that.” Remus sighed, and Sirius finally scooped up enough courage to look at him. His hair was threaded with gold and chestnut in the late-afternoon sunlight, swooped low over his forehead which was etched with too many fault line creases for a sixteen-year-old boy to be carrying by himself. <em>I put those there</em>, Sirius thought. <em>That was my doing</em>. “Maybe I should go.” Remus met his gaze and it felt like a conviction. The air seemed to still between them, seemed to shrivel and curl until it hung there like dead weight, almost as heavy and guilt-ridden as Sirius felt. He shifted so that he was sitting on the backs of his sweaty palms and tipped his head back to stare at the blazing azure sky.</p><p>“Why did you do it.” Remus had been asking this question every time they tried to talk about it, like repetition might drag something more honest out of Sirius than what he had already given to him. Sirius turned to face him, crossed his legs, uncrossed them. Remus was worrying his lip between his teeth. Ever since the incident, if that’s what one could call it, there always seemed to be some palpable emotion twisting the two of them together, shooting up where they didn’t want it to like weeds forcing their way into sidewalk cracks. Maybe it used to be anger but now it was something wearier, some washed-out litany of sadness and hurt that stung like a wasp and couldn’t be soothed. Sirius wanted to reach out and smother Remus’ hands in his, to feel that flickering pulse hammering on his wrist, to kiss that opaque skin and have it not be an olive branch extended over a burning divide.</p><p>“I wish I could tell you. I really, really do. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I don’t even recognize my own face. I wasn’t thinking at all when I did it, like not at all, which isn’t me trying to excuse anything I just--god, I spend so much time trying to not be my family and now I’ve done the same fucked-up shit they do.” Remus was quiet. Sirius’ skin felt too hot, too constricting.</p><p>“Sirius, I don’t know what to do. About—” Remus gestured nonsensically between them, “—this. I miss you. I miss you so much but then there’s this part of me that feels like it would be betraying myself to give in to that feeling.” <em>I’m right here</em>, Sirius wanted to say. <em>You don’t have to give in to anything I’m already here. You already have me</em>. Instead, he stared at Remus’ long, scar-dappled fingers as they pulled at a loose thread on his sweater sleeve. When he spoke, his voice was small.</p><p>“Maybe it’s hypocritical of me to say this since I’m the one who put that feeling there but I miss you too, so much.” He was trying desperately to keep the hysteria out of his voice but he thought Remus could probably see right through him. He always could, somehow. There were no pretenses to keep around Remus. “You don’t—I don’t want you to feel like you’re betraying yourself, or, or something along those lines but if you ever feel like you could look at me again without your insides getting nauseous I would—I’m here. In case.”</p><p>Sirius had spent his whole life escaping things. Sometimes he would look back on his childhood and only see echoes of footprints running away from a doorway, a corridor, a study. His mother, Filch, professors, Regulus. Even after all this time, the thought of having been sorted into Gryffindor still flipped around nervously in his stomach. Sirius Black, bravery? He had tiptoed through his entire first year paranoid that Dumbledore would come swooping in at any moment to whisk him away and deposit him into the Slytherin dungeons; <em>there’s been a mistake, Sirius, you don’t belong with any of these people, they’re so much better than you, but you know that already, don’t you.</em> And then he had told Snape what he did, and everything had unfolded like a gunshot and suddenly here Sirius was, trying to scrape together the pieces of something he didn’t know how to run from.</p><p>But Remus was looking at him quietly and his eyes were soft.</p><p>“I’m not nauseous now, and I’m looking at you, aren’t I?” A bubble of delirious laughter stuck wetly in Sirius’ throat. He was light-headed. Remus considered him for a moment and then reached his fingers across that expanse stretching thin between them to clasp Sirius’ hand in his; the olive branch extended. Sirius couldn’t remember how to breathe properly.</p><p>“Sirius, sometimes you make me want to stick my head in the lake and keep it there for a very, very long time,” Remus began, his words punctuated by the tightening of his hand around Sirius’, “but I think that maybe it’s actually impossible for me to function properly without you. And--and these last weeks have been absolute hell, it’s been fucking hell, and I’m just so tired and I already forgave you anyway, the moment that it happened, probably before it even happened if we’re being completely honest with ourselves--” Sirius, throat suddenly closing in on itself, reached out wildly to tug on the collar of Remus’ sweater and haul him into his lap. He could feel Remus’ chest expand against his, feel the small woosh of air as Remus sighed into his neck. </p><p>“Remus, I--”</p><p>“I know, Sirius. I know.”</p><p>They stayed like that, cocooned within each other’s arms, and didn’t say anything. Sirius was sure that Remus could hear his heart thudding frantically inside his chest, could feel it threatening to fly out of his ribcage. He had never known this kind of guilt before; he had never experienced this much forgiveness. Remus was capable of too much kindness, Sirius thought. He was too good.</p><p>Sirius turned to bury his nose in Remus’ hair and kiss his temple, lightly, feeling like he was touching something hallowed. They shifted their bodies after a while and the air shifted with them. Everything felt lighter, laying there: burrowed in the cool grass, blanketed by springtime, limbs meeting limbs, hands brushing hands and eyes fixed silently on the blue, blue sky.</p>
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